Father and Daughter Talk
by William Easley
Summary: Four years after Weirdmageddon, Wendy tries to decide just who she is and where she's heading. A talk with Manly Dan will help her understand her past and get a better grip on her future.
**Father and Daughter Talk**

(July 1, 2016)

Wendy Corduroy suspected that her dad let her win the log-rolling contest.

They had spun the log wildly as it floated on Lake Gravity Falls, each trying to make the other topple into the water—and at last, with a quick forward-reverse-forward feint, Wendy toppled her dad. Manly Dan roared as he plunged into the drink, raising a mini-tsunami—but it was a roar of laughter. When he clambered out of the water and stuck out his huge hand to haul Wendy in to shore, he said, "Proud of you, girl!"

"Thanks, Dad. You cold?"

"Nah, I been worse. Soon dry out in the sun. Let's go sit up there on the bank." He stopped briefly to heft a cooler they'd brought, and then they began to climb the hill.

Her dad sloshed his way up the grassy slope, then set the cooler down, flopped down beside it, and tugged off his water-filled logging boots. The sun, hot on the first day of July, streamed down on them and sparkled on a lake lively with small boats and over at the distant beach, with waders and swimmers. Father and daughter sat side by side, gazing down at the summer scene. "Nice day, man," Wendy said as she leaned back on her elbows, crossing her lanky legs. She tugged the pine-tree cap lower on her forehead to shade her eyes.

Manly Dan cleared his throat. "Yeah. Baby girl, I'm sorry you and me ain't had more of these nice days."

"Hey, you're pretty busy."

"Still." Manly Dan sat quiet for a few moments, then cleared his throat. "Wendy, since your mom died I've tried to be like a dad and a mother both to you. A seven-foot tall, three-hundred-and-twenty-pound mom. I know I ain't done it well and I ain't done all I should. Sorry for that."

"Hey, hey," she said playfully, rolling on her side to gaze at him with affection. "Don't go killing the mood, man. You did all right."

"You deserve better." Another long pause and then: "So . . . you want to move out on your own, girl?"

She gave her father a quick surprised glance. "Who told?"

"Nobody. I don't think your brothers even suspect. However, I ain't as dense as people think. I know you're getting' antsy. I know a gal already out of high school wants her own life, her own privacy. I can't blame you for that. You're nineteen, high time you stopped bein' your daddy's live-in cook and maid and started to make your own way. You doin' okay on your salary?"

"Oh, yeah." She laughed as she lay back again, arms folded, hands pillowing her head. "Soos pays way more than Stanley Pines ever did. And he and Melody have already offered to rent me a room if I want—Stanford's old bedroom. Dollar a month was as high as they'd go. Can't beat the rates. So . . . so I wouldn't be far away if you need me or want to see me and junk. But would you and the boys be all right?"

"Oh, yeah, I can afford to hire somebody to cook and clean, no worry about that. But, well . . .. You really want to stay on at the Mystery Shack? You could do a lot better. Go to college, get a degree."

She shrugged. "Eh, maybe later on, after I've saved up some money."

Manly Dan grunted.

Tentatively, a little afraid of what she might hear, Wendy asked, "So . . . you sure you're like okay with me moving out, Dad?"

"It's time," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. "I know you been waitin' to ask."

"Thanks, man." Wendy sat up, leaned over, and kissed her father on the cheek, just above the beard line. Then, settling back, she asked quietly, "Dad? What was Mom like? You never talk about her."

"Ah, baby," he said. "You remember her at all?"

"Kinda," Wendy said. "She had long red hair like me. She had a nice laugh."

"She had beautiful hair," Dan said. "Minute I met her, I told her, 'You oughta marry me. Us redheads could have us some awesome children.' And when she laughed—I heard angels." He lay back, staring up at the blue July sky. "I married your mom the day she turned twenty-two and I was eighteen," he said. "Just a jobbin' logger workin' for her granddaddy, Henry Ward. Old Mr. B., hard as heart of pine. Surprised him and her daddy—he was paymaster for the company—let me marry Mandy at all. I mean, I was rough in those days, Wendy. Did too much drinkin' and gamblin' and runnin' around. Your mom tamed me down, made a real man out of me. Times was hard often enough, but she never once let me get discouraged. 'We'll make it, love,' she always told me. Mandy was a hell of a woman." He sniffled. "You remind me so much of her. She'd be proud of you, too, girl."

"What did she like to do?"

His voice grew softer as he seemed to gaze back into the past: "Loved gardenin'. She could grow vegetables on bare granite." He smiled. "That first year, she went 'round to everybody in town that had a garden, flattered them out of seeds— 'You grow such pretty tomatoes, Miz Smith.' 'I wish I could grow corn like that, Mr. Welburne.' She cleared and hoed a patch pretty near an acre big in back of that first one-room log cabin I built for us. We were well found in vegetables that summer, and then she canned enough to see us through the winter. Some weeks we lived on vegetables and nothin' else, or vegetables and whatever meat I could hunt. Old Henry would've helped us, but she wouldn't take off him. 'I'm a married woman, Grandpa,' she'd say. 'Dan and I have to make it on our own.'"

He stretched. "And she sewed her own clothes for the longest time. Always found ways to stretch a penny and make ends meet, even after you kids started comin' along. First Dan, Jr., then you, and then the twins, right before—well."

"Yeah, I know. How did she die?"

Dan shook his head, and when he spoke again, he kept gulping deep breaths and his voice was even hoarser. "Wendy, when the doctor found the cancer, he sent her to specialists. They all said the same thing: Three months at the outside. She was carryin' the twins, and not that far along, and they said if she—if she got rid of them, she could go through chemo and all that, maybe stretch it out to a year. She said hell with that, I'm gonna have my babies."

He cracked the cooler and took out two Rimrock Beers, tossing one to Wendy. "Here ya go."

She caught it, and a few cold drops of ice water flicked onto her bare arm. She grinned uncertainly. "You sure you want to let me drink?"

He winked at her. "Girl, you gonna hide your beer drinkin', remember to look for empty cans under the front seat after you borrow your daddy's pickup." They popped the beers. "Where was I? Right, she was four months pregnant and they said she had three months left to live. She toughed it out and after five more months, the twins were born healthy. And she went on. Three months they all said, and when those months were up, for three more years and two damn months my Mandy wrassled the Angel of Death and helt him off in an armlock. Finally, though, she just plain got too weak and then she went into the hospital and . . . didn't come out again. You were between five an' six, I guess."

"I kind of remember her being tired a lot. But she read to us every night. Made us laugh. Sang to us and junk."

"She was a hell of a woman. Like you're gonna be, baby girl." He was weeping now, his voice choked and clogged. "You get your rangy build and your laziness and orneriness from my side of the family, but never forget your Mama was one hell of a tough woman. You got her blood, too. You're tough and stubborn and you don't give up 'cause of that." Then so softly and shakily that she wasn't sure she heard him right, he added, "Never forget, Wendy, your mama was a Blerble."

Wendy sat bolt upright. "Wait, what?"

But Manly Dan seemed lost in his own thoughts. He drained his beer, dug out two more for them, and then said too casually, "So which boy you got your eye on?"

She nearly choked on the beer. "Uh . . .wait, who said there was a boy?"

Dan popped his beer and said, "I know there's a boy, baby girl. I ain't mad. Who is it?"

She swigged another deep gulp of cold beer. "It's Stanley and Stanford Pines's grand-nephew."

"Well, they're good men both. Saved the town's bacon that one time. Dipper, is it?"

"Yeah. He's sixteen years old, soon to be seventeen—"

"Mm-hmm. And when I married your mom I was just eighteen years old. So that's why you wanna hang around Gravity Falls a couple more years. That's a smart boy, that Pines kid. He'll be goin' to college before too long. That's when you plan to go with him."

"Aw, Dad, I don't know," she confessed. "We just see each other in the summers, and we've just been friends up until, well, a few weeks ago. He's grown a lot, you know. Used to be real short, but now he's nearly as tall as me. Dad, he's smart and funny and he and his sister are like the coolest people I know. I didn't mean to fall in love with him, but—"

"Yeah, it happens." Dan said. "You two using protection?"

She laughed out loud. "OMG! We haven't got that far, Dad!"

"Well, when the time comes—"

"When it does, I'll remember your advice." She paused. "You know back when there was all the trouble, back when we came and busted you guys out of that crazy flying pyramid thing—just a day or so before that happened, Dipper found out his sister Mabel was trapped in this kind of insane bubble-like prison where High Bluff Bridge is. Dipper and I were gonna hot-wire a car—we were in town and needed wheels to get there—to go rescue her. Well, first we had to get away from Gideon Gleeful and his mooks—"

Somehow he was handing her another beer. "That fat little poofy-haired prissy sack of moose manure? How'd you do that?"

She shrugged. "I pulled his buddy Ghost Eyes' arm outa the socket and drop-kicked Gideon into the others' faces."

Dan chuckled. "Kicked that little fat piggy squirt?"

"Yep. Hauled off and planted my boot good. I told him I'd wear his ass on my foot like a rhinestone slipper, and I sure did."

"Huh! Get any distance?"

She nodded. "'Bout twenty yards, but the wind was against me."

"Twenty yards, damn! Good for you, gal. Have another beer."

"Thanks, man." She took it. "How many is this now? May be a bad idea. I'm gettin' a real buzz. Okay, talk about guts, right? So I hot-wired a cop car, right? And I drove through all sorts of weirdness, and Gideon and his glee club were hot after us, so we had to jump the gorge in our hijacked cop cruiser, and we made it but the car smashed down hard and rolled over like a dozen times, and we drug ourselves out of the wreck. I was hurtin' in places I didn't know I had, couldn't hardly move my arm, and I guess I had a concussion, 'cause I was sort of in and out of consciousness, and Dipper, man, he couldn't even stand up." She smiled and a single tear ran down her cheek. "Little dude couldn't even get up on his hands and knees, man, but he started to crawl in the dirt toward Mabel's prison bubble, still a quarter mile off, draggin' himself along with his elbows. Crawlin' on his knees and elbows with all that doomsday shit comin' down because he was hell-bent on rescuin' his sister. I think I started to fall in love right then." She raised her beer. "Talk about guts, man. Talk about tough."

"Sounds like you two might have a future together," Dan said, clinking the rim of his beer can against hers. "Tell him not to be too a-scared of me. If he wants to ask my blessin', it's okay by me."

"God, I love you, Dad."

"Same here, Baby Girl. Same here."

Later that evening, maybe a little less sober, Wendy climbed into her car—a rolling wreck, ten times used already before she got it, a faded forest-green 1973 Dodge Dart with a slant six engine that she had taken apart and reassembled twice, once to learn it, once to get it in peak condition. The odometer had surely already seen 999,999 at least once before and now stood at 203,618, and still the car refused to die. She roared into town and up the hill to the McGucket Mansion—as people called it now—and drove through the permanently-open front gate. A shiny new Lincoln waited at the front steps, and she parked, badly, right behind it.

She climbed out and went right in without ringing the bell. In the foyer she met two tall, bulky, nearly identical gray-haired men heading out, arguing with each other. "Hi, Stan dudes," Wendy said.

They glanced at her, interrupting their quarrel. "Hiya, Wendy," said Stanley Pines. He squinted at her and grinned. "How's it hangin'?"

The other, his twin Stanford snapped, "Stanley! Manners! Good evening, Miss Corduroy."

"Hey, Wendy," Stanley said, "Poindexter here and I are goin' on a little trip to Vegas. You and Dipper and Mabel want to tag along and learn something about games of chance?"

"Thanks, but no, not me," Wendy said, smiling. "I suppose you have a system."

Stanford winked. "It's all in working the odds," he said.

"He figures 'em, I play 'em, and together we mop up," Stanley added. "We're already banned in Atlantic City!"

They said their goodbyes and went on out. Since they had turned ownership of the Mystery Shack over to Soos, the twin brothers stayed here whenever they were in town, always welcome guests of Gravity Falls's famous, or infamous, research scientist.

Somewhere in the huge house, the wealthy and very nearly sane Fiddleford McGucket was puttering happily in his lab, busy inventing God only knew what. Mabel was probably out with some guy—she hadn't found a steady one yet, but she never tired of auditioning them. And Dipper—well, Wendy knew where to look.

In the library, Wendy found Dipper, seated at a table and immersed in a book—one of the famous Journals, destroyed by Bill Cipher, but then rescued by Blendin Blandin from some time in the past and flawlessly duplicated, invisible writing and all, by the advanced printing industry of Procyon 4 in the far future. Dipper's were mint first-generation copies; the originals were back with Stanford. They were gifts from the Time Baby, who didn't die the second time around—you know what? Leave that for another story. It's complicated.

"Hi, dude," Wendy said, hauling a library chair around and sitting on it backwards close beside Dipper. Her head was spinning a little and her smile felt as if it might look silly. "'Sup?"

"Wendy!" Dipper said as he emerged from his fog, his tone excited. "Listen, I think there's another mystery to be solved—a lost Spanish treasure guarded by supernatural monsters—mmph!"

"Cool, man," said Wendy, breaking the kiss. "But first you gotta say hi to your girlfriend."

Dipper stared at her and grinned. "You've had a beer or two."

"Got another one in the car with your name on it, dude. I mean boyfriend."

Dipper grinned shyly. She loved the way he still blushed when she said something like that. Then she got serious: "Dipper, what do you think? We really gonna, like, get married when you're ready for college?"

"I asked you already," he told her quietly. "All you have to do is say yes."

She stared at the floor. In a small voice she asked, "I dunno. I love you, man, but maybe—Dude, would it matter to you if we couldn't have kids? Is that a deal-breaker?"

He sat up in obvious alarm. "What? Why? Are you sick or something? What's wrong?"

She looked up, the tears spilling. "I'm afraid to think what our kids might turn out to be," she wailed. "I dunno if it was some shapeshifting magic or some weird alien technology, or what, but—" she hiccupped and then said miserably, "Dude, my dad just told me today—my mom was a gerbil!"

Fortunately, they got it straight in time and Wendy learned how she'd gained her middle name because she was the great-granddaughter of Henry Ward Blerble, and that had been her mother's maiden name.

Eventually.

Just not that night.


End file.
